Evaluation of three-dimensional urban expansion: A case study of Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Abstract:With rapid urban development in China in the last two decades, the three-dimensional (3D) characteristic has been the main feature of urban morphology. However, the vast majority of researches of urban growth have focused on the planar area (two-dimensional (2D)) expansion. Few studies have been conducted from a 3D perspective. In this paper, the 3D urban expansion of the Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China from 2003 to 2012 was evaluated based on Geographical Information System (GIS) tools and high-resolution remote sensing images. Four indices, namely weighted average height of buildings, volume of buildings, 3D expansion intensity and 3D fractal dimension are used to quantify the 3D urban expansion. The weighted average height of buildings and the volume of buildings are used to illustrate the temporal change of the 3D urban morphology, while the other two indices are used to calculate the expansion intensity and the fractal dimension of the 3D urban morphology. The results show that the spatial distribution of the high-rise buildings in Yangzhou has significantly spread and the utilization of the 3D space of Yangzhou has become more efficient and intensive. The methods proposed in this paper laid a foundation for a wide range of study of 3D urban morphology changes.

Analysis of Three-Dimensional Space Expansion Characteristics in Old Industrial Area Renewal Using GIS and Barista: A Case Study of Tiexi District, Shenyang, China

“…Different cities have different skylines, which reflect their unique character. City skylines are one of the most typical and vivid expressions of urban space [33]. City skylines usually refer to the skyline viewed from a certain direction at a certain location in the city.…”

“…These research efforts were based on vertical measurements, such as building heights, but did not include representations of the changes in space and time of urban landscapes in 3D.Qin et al and Shi et al take Yangzhou and Shanghai as examples to analyze their three-dimensional spatial forms, respectively. At the same time, from the perspective of the characteristics and driving factors of urban three-dimensional spatial expansion, they analyze the mechanism of urban three-dimensional spatial forms expansion lacking a grasp of spatial distribution of architectural landscape [6,33]; Qiao et al and Qin Jing used the deviation and sum of the three-dimensional urban gravity center respectively. The fractal dimension of urban morphology is used to quantitatively describe the expansion of urban three-dimensional spatial morphology [33,34].…”

Three-Dimensional Urban Expansion Analysis of Valley-Type Cities: A Case Study of Chengguan District, Lanzhou, China

“…Zhang et al [20,21] employed the SS-coMCRF model to obtain data from medium resolution Landsat image and adopted Gaussian kernel density, overlay analysis to find the different expansion pattern in East Asian megacities and relationships between major socioeconomic factors and urban 3D expansion in Guangzhou. Qin et al [22] proposed the analysis of the 3D fractal dimension and found that the 3D space utilization of Yangzhou city became more efficient and intensive. There are also studies used radar [23,24] or laser data [25] to extract urban 3D information or presented new methods (e.g., volume [26] extent of urban expansion [27]) to elaborate the anisotropy and spatial heterogeneity of expansion as well as the spatial-temporal characteristics of urban 3D growth.…”

“…Grid analysis can realize the spatialization of quantitative indicators; it also can provide more information than single building height. Such as Qin et al [22] expressed the 3D morphology expansion with grid analysis and identified areas with the highest expansion intensity.…”

On the potential of urban three-dimensional space development: The case of Liuzhou, China

“…Other isolated efforts include studies on land use suitability evaluation (Gong, Liu, & Chen, 2012;Wei, et al, 2015;Xu, Kong, Li, Zhang, & Wu, 2011), economic demand analysis (Wragg & Lim, 2015;Zacharias, 1999), and viewshed analysis (Llobera, 2003;Miller, 2001;Sander & Manson, 2007;. Few researchers have conducted quantitative research on 3D urban morphology (see, e.g., Qin, et al, 2015), and most existing studies have focused on sub-regions of a city rather than the whole city area (see, e.g., Yoshida & Omae, 2005;Yu, Liu, Wu, Hu, & Zhang, 2010). Most importantly, no studies have investigated the potential for 3D space development by considering land use suitability, economic feasibility, and landscape visibility at the same time.…”